MINIMIZING L2 LEARNERS’ PRAGMATICS FAILURE THROUGH CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS’ WARENESS

Abstract

Language used by people becomes the main focus of pragmatics. Pragmatics shows how using a language is not solely mean applying the system of that language. Pragmatics claims that people should deliver the language appropriately based on the context so that the intended meaning will be correctly conveyed. Pragmatic competence is aimed to achieve successful interactions between non-native speakers (NNs) and native speakers (NS) of a particular target language. The learners who are incompetent in pragmatics will suffer pragmatic failure. Pragmatic failure occurs as the consequence of different rules and norms of different cultures of the languages.  This paper  descriptively describes how teaching supposed to contribute in the settings of crosscultural pragmatics instruction in order to lead the learners to avoid mistakes in understanding pragmatics concepts. This is a literature study in which the writers used various printed sources as their major data including the research results of previous studies. There are several suggestions proposed by the scholars in order to minimize the L2 learners’ pragmatic failure, i.e. providing clear instruction related to cross-cultural differences, increasing learners’ target cultural knowledge, and increasing communicative strategies used by the students. Besides, in order to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness, the instruction of the teachers can be done by designing language course aimed to let the learners achieve communicative competence, planning course materials related to pragmatics, and choosing activities that useful for pragmatic development and rasing the leaners’ pragmatic awareness.